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a virtual interdisciplinary artist residency for youth seeking to alchemize climate grief through eco-social art practice.

Applications are now closed.

Beginning this Black August, Our Climate Voices is excited to invite youth to gather for a virtual journey alchemizing climate grief through eco-social art practice in partnership with Lead to Life. Over the course of seven months (from September 2021 - March 2022), a constellation of 12 youth artists, aged 15-18 years old, will engage in an interdisciplinary art practice inspiring transformation, co-learning, curiosity, and creation. 


In the midst of the current climate crisis, we recognize the need for space to process feelings of uncertainty, loss, and grief alongside joy, hope, and visioning. We also know it’s critical to tether our individual grieving to our bioregions, our communities, our more-than-human kin and call upon the cultural memory that reminds us that we have ancestral wisdom we can call upon to guide us through climate collapse.

The root of remedy means to heal back - our intention for this residency is to offer healing and medicine to the youth gathered and to offer healing backward and forward through time for the generations who have come before and after us.

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  • the space to work across mediums - to both collaborate with mediums they are comfortable in while also meeting new mediums to work in to radicalize and reimagine what forms and expressions are possible through us 

  • encountering artists who root their art practice in the ecological, social and public space to ground their art practice in a lineage 

  • connecting with personal and speculative ancestral ritual craft and protective protocols to engage at the level of spirit with one’s art practice

  • “earth intimacy” (Weaving Earth) with your respective bioregion 

  • developing and deepening creative methods to communicate climate storytelling 

  • 1:1 mentorship with facilitators 

  • grief literacy and healing modalities 

  • collaboration across distance; cultivating a sense of movement ecosystems 

  • funds (amount TBA) to support participants with art supplies and everyday expenses 

The residency will culminate with a virtual exhibition where selected artists will have the space to share their work

FAQs

 

WHAT IS ALCHEMY?

Alchemy has historically been an ancient mystic practice where alchemists explored transforming base metals into stronger, more powerful metals. Lead to Life draws upon this ancient exploration of alchemy through transforming guns into the otherwise to create ritual objects and tools in ceremony with black families impacted by state violence and with land that has been impacted by environmental desecration and extraction. For Lead to Life, alchemy is about the power to be able to transmute uncreative violence into imagination, to decompose sites of trauma and regenerate them into sites of healing.

WHAT IS ECO-SOCIAL ART PRACTICE?

A commitment to practicing art informed by societal and ecological concern with the intention to  re-weave and repair the ecological and social as connected. 

WHAT IS INTERDISCIPLINARY ART?

A combination of arts utilizing more than one artistic medium. Examples of different arts include visual, performance, musical, digital, sound, poetry, writing, conceptual, etc. All mediums and modes of creativity are accepted in our definition of interdisciplinary art.

WHEN WILL MEETINGS TAKE PLACE?

We will gather together on Sundays, following the outline listed below. Times will be established in support of honoring time zones of the cohort, to the best of our abilities.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

Youth, prioritizing BIPoC, ages 15-18 years old who are curious in deepening their climate justice work through eco-social art practice. We ask that applicants are within this age range within the duration of the residency. This residency is for those who desire to learn together and expand their current art practice. We are open to international applicants across bioregions.

RESIDENCY FLOW

September 2021 - March 2022

  • September - “take root among the stars” 

    • Meeting 1, September 12th: Orientation Call & Introductory Workshop

    • Meeting 2, September 26th: Art as Eco-Social Practice & Ritual Art Practice

  • October - lineage 

    • Meeting 3, October 10th: Harvest from September

    • Meeting 4, October 24th: Climate Storytelling Workshop with Our Climate Voices

  • November - honoring our grief 

    • Meeting 5, November 7th: Harvest from October 

    • Meeting 6, November 21st: Rite of Passage, Humility & Movement Ecosystem work 

  • December - deep rest towards solstice

    • Meeting 7, December 5th:  Guest Facilitator

    • Meeting 8, December 19th: Winter Solstice Ritual

  • January - thin veils & safe passage 

    • Meeting 9, January 9th: Harvest from December

    • Meeting 10, January 23rd: Learning from the Arctic Squirrel 

  • February - bringing our dreams into the waking 

    • Meeting 11, February 6th: Dreams as Resource

    • Meeting 12, February 20th: Co-Liberation & Emergence of Visions

  • March - re-emergence

    • Meeting 13, March 6th: Guest Facilitator

    • Meeting 14, March 20th: Collective Ritual, ancestral foodways dinner

  • Constellation Culmination - Closing Online Exhibition

    • Sunday, March 27th, 2022

FACILITATORS/GUIDES

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bronte velez (they/them)

brontë’s work and rest is committed to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and decomposing systems of oppression through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective and ecological educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth. brontë is currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding and the San Francisco Symphony. A black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, brontë’s work lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, environmental regeneration and death doulaship.

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CHELSEA CALL (she/they/them)

Chelsea is an interdisciplinary artist, art therapist, and interspecies ally residing on the unceded land of the Western Abenaki people in so-called Vermont. Rooted in an intersectional framework, her work focuses on stewarding spaces of presence and regeneration across species. She holds a Masters degree in Art Therapy & Counseling from Southwestern College and is committed to her work as a creative doula, exploring the liminal spaces between species to incite healing justice.

APPLY TODAY!

We’re looking forward to meeting you!